OSWELL, William Cotton; OSWELL, W. Edward (ed.).

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William Cotton Oswell, Hunter and Explorer. The Story of his Life. First US edition, same year as the UK. Cotton was educated at Rugby and Haileybury, the Company's seminary, before taking up a post as assistant collector at Arcot. Transferring to Madras he "won celebrity as an elephant-catcher" (ODNB). Ill health forced him to leave India for South Africa; "There he spent two years in hunting and became acquainted with the missionary David Livingstone. When in 1849 Livingstone determined to investigate the truth of rumours as to a great lake in the Kalahari, Oswell and his friend Mungo Murray returned to South Africa from England in order to take part in the exploration, Oswell undertaking to defray the whole expense of the guides. The result was the discovery by Europeans of Lake Ngami, and the important practical demonstration that the Kalahari could be crossed by oxen and wagons... He again accompanied Livingstone in 1851, on an expedition to meet the Kololo paramount chief Sebituane. On that occasion they first sighted the Zambezi River... In his lifetime he was more celebrated as a gentleman sportsman than as an African explorer. His collection of hunting trophies was renowned as a private museum and, at the end of his life, he contributed chapters to C. P. Wolley's anthology Big Game Shooting (1894). To the regret of his contemporaries, Oswell published no accounts of his expeditions with Livingstone". The present work was published to make up this deficiency. Loosely

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